1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to methods and systems for monitoring an object. More particularly, the present invention relates to monitoring an object with identification data and tracking data.
2. Related Art
In general, monitoring systems have been developed for specific applications. These monitoring systems attempt to let a user be aware of what is happening in the monitored environment and what objects are involved. Examples of objects include persons, vehicles, boxes, pallets, carts, and any other kind of object.
Typically, these monitoring systems focus on either identifying the objects or tracking what is happening in the monitored environment.
Monitoring systems that focus on identifying the objects can provide high accuracy in identifying the objects. However, these monitoring systems typically are deficient in several ways. First, the high accuracy in identifying objects is spatially limited. That is, the objects have to be within a particular distance of the identification sensors of the monitoring system to maintain the high accuracy. Beyond the particular distance, the accuracy can drop significantly. Secondly, since the focus is on identifying the objects, these monitoring systems typically lack or fail to provide sufficiently reliable tracking sensors to track the activity of the objects outside the scope of the identification sensors.
Alternatively, monitoring systems that focus on tracking what is happening in the monitored environment can track the activity of the objects in the monitored environment, where the monitored environment typically can be any desired size or shape. For example, the monitored environment can be small or large in size. Unfortunately, the accuracy of these monitoring systems typically decreases as the size of the monitored environment is increased. Moreover, these monitoring systems tend to assign tracking identifiers to each monitored object. These tracking identifiers usually are unrelated to the real identity of the monitored object.
A monitoring system capable of providing automated monitoring with the desired level of accuracy and flexibility is needed.